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PeteF3

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Everything posted by PeteF3

  1. PeteF3
    This was good, but nowhere near Big Egg Universe. They blow a lot of stuff down the stretch, and Toyota blowing off the opening work was problematic. It looked like they were going for a JOCS off the top turnbuckle for the big mindblowing spectacular kill-Aja-dead finish and they couldn't execute. Still, Toyota's win gets a big pop, comes off as an upset, and is an historic moment, so it's worth watching for that alone.
  2. PeteF3
    Bull Nakano vs. Kyoko Inoue, Wrestling Queendom This is for Bull's WWF Women's title. Hot start as Bull attempts a superplex and Kyoko, accidentally or not, knocks her all the way to the floor in a sick bump. Then Kyoko pulls out her vault-up-and-spring-backwards counter using the guardrail in a cool spot. This is a solid, workmanlike match. I wouldn't call it essential, but it's well-laid-out and psychologically sound, and has a more stripped down, traditional shine-heat-comeback-finish layout than your average AJW bout. Kyoko gets some good hope spots and near-falls, kicks out at 1 on the Guillotine Legdrop, and Bull has to bust out the somersault variation to put her down. This felt like a traveling-champion bout, which it sort of was, and thus was unique to an AJW setting.
  3. PeteF3
    Hey everybody, who likes the Brawl for All?! Anyone? If you do, who wants to see a Brawl-for-All match go 24 minutes? Anyone? Bueller? Yeah. I don't like Hotta to begin with and Asuka is little more than a name with a reputation to me at this point. So I had no emotional involvement in the match, so it's just two ladies occasionally stiffing each other and occasionally whiffing entirely. Calling it a 24-minute Brawl-for-All isn't *quite* fair, as they do other stuff--like power bombs, more power bombs, attempted power bombs, countered power bombs, and variations of power bombs. Hotta eventually knocks Asuka out and thank God this is over.
  4. PeteF3
    I'm honestly a little surprised that they got away with using the name Yokozuna here. I didn't think this was BAD, but it was disappointing--there are glimpses of a good match here and it doubtless would have been if Yoko were to go down about 100 pounds. The bullshit was annoying and ultimately unnecessary. The interfering guy looked like either Isamu Teranishi or Kengo Kimura but I don't see what either would be doing in WAR at this point. Yoko still has some nice crunchy offense and big fat bumps, but he sort of blows his belly-to-belly suplex and can only do the Banzai Drop off the bottom rope.
  5. PeteF3
    This told pretty much the same story as the Taue match--lots of parity for the first 2/3, then the higher-ranked guy pulls away--but with more advanced offense and counterwrestling. There's some stiffness and hate here, but since these guys are partners tempers are generally held more in check than in the Taue bout. Great match--I haven't seen the '97 stuff yet but this strikes me as the best between these two to this point.
  6. PeteF3
    The Monster Maniacs cut a promo on Bockwinkel's ineffectiveness and insist that only reinstating Ric Flair can allow Bock to regain control of WCW. Makes sense. Time to undo a mistake that shouldn't have been made to start with.
  7. PeteF3
    One of the better skits WCW ever did, and probably the funniest of the ones actually meant to be funny.
  8. PeteF3
    White Boy with a spectacular promo describing his plans for Buddy Landell in a Tennessee Chain Match. Landell has too few scars to have any chain match experience, and White Boy has been leaving Mr. Ron Wright's chain out in the rain and under horse dung so he can infect Landell when he cuts him up with it! I don't like Budro's chances here. New Jack is much more confident this week about his chances of making Tracy Smothers salute the X flag, while also making time to cut a promo on Killer Kyle's match with that inbred retard Boo Bradley. Jack gets to the Undertaker and suddenly is practically crying--New Jack is GREAT at the desperate, trying-too-hard-to-act-confident bit, suddenly growing paranoid and accusing Ross of having something to do with all this. Fun to see a new side of his promos. Evidently the Gangstas did a number on Boo, as Ross alludes to before his next interview. Al Snow delivers a very patronizing promo about what's in the hearts of the Rock 'n Roll Express, before he and Unabomb don the appropriate wigs. Unabomb's cross-eyed mouth-breather expression is pretty funny. Snow sounds more like Beavis than Ricky Morton but the effort is admirable, especially combined with his exasperation with Ross. "If you ever had an original thought, it'd die of loneliness." Snow offers to read a letter from Robert Gibson's mother but can't, because it's in Sign Language! "'Please don't hurt my EUUUHHH anymore' Oh, that's right, that's what Robert Gibson's mother used to call him cuz she couldn't talk!" THAT gets a big "ooooh" from the audience. What happened to the early '95 Al Snow?
  9. PeteF3
    Fun little segment, with a history lesson from Dundee and some good improv from Rich.
  10. PeteF3
    This looks like the start of the big Bill Dundee vs. Wolfie D split, which I hope this Yearbook captures. Bill is not happy about fighting his son's battles and getting involved in a piledriver elimination match because of Wolfie D, but promises to dump Rich and Gilbert on their heads anyway. Noticeable boos from the audience when Bill is introduced--either they were on Christopher's side or they were disappointed it wasn't Lawler, or both.
  11. PeteF3
    I don't have much definitive to say yet in that thread about whether or not ECW was overhyped. But the contrast between the last two promos in which Funk and Cactus are literally promising to kill or cripple the other to what was going on in the WWF then as well as now can't be overstated. The WWF just feels sterile and desperate--ECW is far from perfect but at least the wrestlers and fans are allowed to show real emotion. I wouldn't want all wrestling to be like ECW but it's clear that it was at worst a necessary evil and at best the fire under wrestling's ass that it needed. Anyway, this has to be one of the last appearances of the old podium on WWF programming. Ross regales us with a lecture on the race card as it relates to Jerry Lawler. Bret laments how a man's character can be destroyed by one person making baseless accusations--well, THIS suddenly got unintentionally prescient. Shinja and Hakushi is out and God, was Shinja overlooked in that Fuji thread for most useless managers. Hakushi finally levels Bret to pay all this off with something.
  12. PeteF3
    Another sterling promo from Cactus, who should just get the Best Interview Award right now even without considering what's to come.
  13. PeteF3
    Okay, this is one of my favorite Funk promos ever. He goes from positively giddy over all the things he's going to do to Cactus Jack and points out, "If I had a face like that, I'd have it circumsized!" Then he does a 180 in two seconds and gets deadly serious, before wrapping it up with an evil laugh.
  14. PeteF3
    Another great fight that tells its story and gets in and out. I have to agree that Kobashi has "seemed" hotter over the past year, starting with his win over Hansen (even though Taue did the same thing later in the Carny) to Misawa & Kobashi controlling the tag titles. But Taue showed he had another gear here, busting out some new offense and utilizing the floor and the Dynamic Bomb to decisively put Kobashi down. Kobashi looked gutsy in defeat with the way he tried to hang on, but it seemed like Taue's match to lose in the closing moments and he came through.
  15. PeteF3
    Finally, a balls-to-the-wall FIGHT in All-Japan instead of a 35-minute epic. 35-minute epics are cool but too many of them in a short time are not. Akiyama is very good here and shows a lot of fire but in the end I can barely remember much of what he did, which in a way feels like a drop-off from his performances in the '94 Carnival. This is more of a Kawada Show, setting up Jun's offense and killing him dead in response, and a damn good one it is.
  16. PeteF3
    I had TWO power outages while I was trying to watch this, so this is a deadly combination of disjointedness and me being in a foul mood. I didn't and still don't get the point of the 1-count stip (I keep expecting Mike Rotunda to show up somewhere here), but it's worked really well and they manage to actually incorporate "near falls" into this. Nonetheless, the layout and rules were confusing as heck even after viewing ThunderQueen. Apparently the match could have ended in the opening 1-on-1 portions but no one could possibly have bought that as a possibility, so there wasn't much drama there. I don't know anything about Sumiyo Toyama but she's the most laughably ineffective wrestler of this entire project, and that includes Mikey Whipwreck--not since that Steve Regal/Spike Huber Memphis tag has there been a more overmatched babyface. She jobs to a Kansai lariat in 7 seconds and pretty much all of her offense is no-sold. At this point I'm expecting this to be elimination or best-of-something rules after last year's match, but one pinfall later and it's over. This is another match that kind of defies a star rating. It was fun, and it may make more sense with more context, but there were times when it felt more like a game of Whack-a-Mole than a wrestling match.
  17. PeteF3
    I don't get the purpose of the Yuki gimmick. Hasegawa wrestles exactly the same way here, so what's the point? I pretty much hate post-'89 Muta but at least he makes an effort to differentiate his style and personality when he's got the paint on. This match is solid, but that's all. If there's the quintessential "joshi by numbers" performance, this is it--if you've watched enough joshi you can pretty much count every spot before it happens. Hell, I could do it and I've only been watching since starting these Yearbooks.
  18. PeteF3
    One thing about Walton is that he was an ITV broadcaster with an assignment, not a Joint Promotions mouthpiece. Now it was obviously mutually beneficial for Walton to get the product over, but he didn't have the same obligations that guys like Ross and Monsoon did. Maintaining his own credibility, or even trying to effect change in what was broadcast, may have been a more important issue than it was for other wrestling announcers. Did the Japanese or lucha announcers ever do anything like that? I'm pretty sure most or all of them are also station employees as well (which is why as I'm watching the early-'90s stuff Dr. Morales is calling both CMLL and AAA, or how Ichiro Furutachi went from calling '80s NJPW to hosting a newspanel show).
  19. PeteF3
    Undertaker, bless him, stays in character for all this. Way to kill the atmosphere by having Shawn and Diesel pose in a photo together.
  20. PeteF3
    Part of a weird angle where Barry Horowitz, having gotten advice from Razor Ramon, took Jeff Jarrett to the limit during a squash and earned an IC title shot, only to get attacked by Bob Backlund and for Bob to suddenly sign the contract instead. Razor isn't happy about this.
  21. PeteF3
    It wasn't very long--Savage had the Slim Jim outfit by the summer. (Or as Heenan put it, "Snap Into It--you think that refers to his father's leg?")
  22. PeteF3
    Vader mercifully shoves Tenay out of the way before he can ruin another interview segment. Flair looks creepy as hell in eye shadow and nail polish. Buffer helpfully points out that this strap match is "sanctioned by WCW and the Mississippi State Athletic Commission." Way to sink the whole premise of the show, guys. This entire show needs to be mentioned among the all-time bait-and-switches, as they more or less promised a more violent, "adult" show, and ended up firing guys for blading and going to a wide angle on chair shots. This is objectively the second-finest strap match WCW held on PPV in the first half of the decade, but it's still a pretty terrible match. Somehow Flair works hotter sequences with the fucking Renegade outside than anything Hogan and Vader do. Both men liberally remove themselves from the strap, just because. Jimmy Hart shows up in tattered clothing, with no explanation after his disappearance was the running theme of the show the entire night. Hogan of course wins by dragging Flair to all four corners but gets double-teamed afterward, with Renegade "trying to get in the ring" sayeth Tony Schiavone. All for naught, as Hogan naturally makes his own comeback. Then some subterfuge involving Randy Savage disguised as a masked Arn Anderson--did the babyfaces just happen to have an extra black outfit with them? Arn gets embarrassed for the second time tonight after cutting such a gritty, realistic promo earlier. I can't say that this was BORING, though the some of the work approached it so the focus could be on Flair and Renegade. But man is this garbage.
  23. PeteF3
    Flair in a dress. That's all that needs to be said. Oh, and Schiavone declaring that since this is Uncensored, the match will continue, moments before Gary Capetski announces a disqualification. Oh, that WCW quality control.
  24. PeteF3
    This show had features and music videos before seemingly every match. Savage is then interviewed by a very stiff and uncomfortable Mike Tenay.
  25. PeteF3
    "Burn my face into your memory, it'll be there long as I want it to be." Great promo as usual, and you'd never think you were about to see this man with a bucket on his head selling for a Burgess Meredith ripoff.
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